Jack Hassard writes that 75% of Americans can vote by mail.
Although your vote will be counted if it is postmarked by 7:00 pm on November 3, I urge you to vote earlier or, if possible, vote in person. I intend to vote in person, no matter how long the lines. Trump will try to drag out the counting of the votes, in order to throw doubt on the outcome and discredit the election. Unless there is an overwhelming vote against him, he will lick himself in his office or in the White House bunker and refuse to leave. Vote him out by overwhelming numbers. Show up at the voting place if you can. If you must vote by mail, cast your vote as early as possible.
Hassard writes:
Most of us living in the United States can vote by mail. There will be no need to stand in line for hours. There will be no fear of COVID-19 because you can receive your ballot by mail, and then drive to a drop off location. A friend can do the same for you. If you want to use the USPS, then make sure that your ballot is time stamped before 7:00 P.M. on November 3, 2020.
However, one of the underlying fears, beyond the coronavirus, is voter suppression. In Georgia, where I have lived for more than 50 years, voter suppression in the last Georgia election (2018) likely led to Stacey Abrams losing to Brian Kemp. Kemp, who was Georgia’s secretary of state, was accused of conflict of interest by overseeing an election in which he was a candidate. There were accusations that Brian Kemp, as secretary of state made if very difficult for some people to vote, including blacks, poor people, and students. According to an article in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, precinct closures around Georgia made it very difficult for a lot of people to vote. The journal article estimated that between 55 and 85,000 voters were affected. Stacey Abrams lost the election by 55,000 votes.
Even today, some counties in Georgia have either moved or closed polling stations. This makes it very difficult for people to vote, especially if people simply can’t take hours off of work to cast a vote. In some cases, people who had only to travel a mile or so to vote, now have to travel more than 10 miles. Because of this, Black voters were 20% more likely to miss elections because of long distances.
Voting by Mail is Essential Business
In the upcoming election, it is imperative that we as the citizenry pay attention, and learn as much as we can about the voting options open to us.
Voting by mail will overrule those officials who have a vested interest in making it difficult to vote. But, it doesn’t have to be that way, and it is possibly very easy for us to fight back against the “suppressionists.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I plan to vote by mail or by dropping off the ballot at the office of the board of elections. If my requested ballot fails to arrive, I will ” suit up” and vote early.
CBS News reports that a former top postal official claims Mnuchin and the White House were involved in the slowing of the mail scheme. I would think this claims should spark another round of investigations.https://www.cbsnews.com/news/former-top-postal-service-official-testifies-mnuchin-white-house-slowing-mail/
This is why there should be ONLY “Absentee Voting” and NOT “Mail-in-Voting”.
The difference between Absentee Voting and Mail-in-Voting:
The only similarity in the two is that they are both mailed in and are counted the same, but that is where the similarity ends.
An “Absentee Ballot” is when a voter contacts the County Board of Elections and request an application for an Absentee Ballot because they are not able for one reason or another to vote in person. The County Board of Elections sends them the application for an Absentee Ballot. Here’s the difference:
The voter requested the Absentee Ballot.
The voter knows he/she will be receiving the ballot in the mail.
When it arrives, they know what it is.
They complete the ballot and return it by mail.
I know this process works because I have done it about six times.
Mail-In-Voting is when the ballots are arbitrarily sent to every registered voter, to the address on file. Here’s the difference:
The voter didn’t request the ballot so he/she may not know they are receiving one, and when it arrives may not have any idea what it is.
They don’t complete the ballot and mail it in because they chose not to vote.
The voter could be deceased, but will still receive one, because they are still on the voter rolls.
The voter may have moved, but one will be sent to address on file regardless, because they have no way of knowing the voter moved.
In the scenarios above, there’s a ballot lying around that can be used by anyone.
In the 2016 Election I voted by Absentee Ballot because I was unable to vote in person. A year or so later, Governor Murphy (NJ), in his infinite wisdom, declared that anyone who previously voted by Absentee Ballot will not automatically receive a Mail-In-Ballot unless they “opt out”. This was in the newspapers, and I read the newspapers so I knew I was receiving one, but many did not; and they received one.
I know this because as a poll worker, when they approached the table and gave their name, it was stamped across their name in the book, “Mail-In-Ballot”. When we told them this, they looked at us in disbelief, as they had NO idea they received a Mail-In-Ballot. They received it, and either didn’t know what it was and discarded it, put it aside and forgot about it, the dog ate it, etc. But the point here is, they didn’t request a ballot, so they didn’t expect one, and when it came, had no idea what it was.
And that is the difference between Absentee Voting and Mail-In-Voting.
Some states, like Nevada, send all registered voters an “Application” to request a ballot. If they want to vote, then they complete the application, mail it in, and then receive a Mail-In-Ballot. At least in this case the voter wants to vote, requests a ballot, and knows they’ll be receiving a ballot. And the Board of Elections knows the individual is alive and received the ballot at the address they sent it to.
Five states have all mail-in voting and reported no problems and higher voter participation.
Utah, hardly a liberal bastion, has never had a case of election fraud since it went to all mail-in balloting years ago. Republicans still have a death-grip on the state, and the balloting is smooth here. The biggest pain is that we don’t know the results of some close elections for a week or two, but that’s not that big of a deal.
I plan on voting by mail, here in NJ we are supposed to get the mail-in ballots weeks in advance of the election. If there is a drop box near me, then I will probably deposit the ballot in the drop box. Even under the present horrible circumstances, the USPS has been working fine for me with a few glitches here and there (receiving other people’s mail). My conveniently close polling station will be closed, so I will use either the USPS or drop boxes. It is just criminal that we live in a country in which a president and his party purposely and willfully are sabotaging the USPS, a vital service and civic function of the state, any state/nation.
I live in California [born in the state] and have been voting by mail for years. California sends a sample ballot first giving us time to mark all of our choices and then the actual ballot shows up and if the voters already did their homework with the sample ballot that arrived days or weeks earlier, all it takes is a few minutes to mark the official ballot.
Then we can drive to the nearest dropbox or US post office. The closest post office is less than a mile from my house and the city center about 3 miles. I could walk it if I wanted to.
Most cities and towns in California designate locations to drop the ballots off and that way we probably avoid the US mail. The best drop boxes are usually located at each city/town hall where the locally elected government has their offices.
Does everyone have to affix a stamp on the envelope? We do in Florida. If so, maybe some community organizers in poor areas can pay for the postage to encourage voting.
In Utah, there has been no postage requirement, until this general election. It was free to mail before that.
We have drop boxes at every city office and a few other places, too.
I’ll vote in person. I fear mail-in voting is going to be a total disaster. I think about 20% of the mail-in votes case in the primary this year in New York was disqualified. Looks similar results in many other states, and all this was on a much smaller scale than this general election will be, obviously.
https://www.npr.org/2020/08/22/904693468/more-than-550-000-primary-absentee-ballots-rejected-in-2020-far-outpacing-2016
“Election experts said first-time absentee voters are much more likely to make the kinds of mistakes that lead to rejected ballots. Studies also show that voters of color and young voters are more likely than others to have their ballots not count.
Most absentee or mail-in ballots are rejected because required signatures are missing or don’t match the one on record, or because the ballot arrives too late.
“If something goes wrong with any of this, that’s a problem writ large, but it’s also going to be one that hits some populations of the United States a bit harder than others, potentially disenfranchises different groups of folks at higher rates,” said Rob Griffin of the Democracy Fund, which is conducting a sweeping survey of the 2020 electorate with researchers at UCLA.
Griffin said, so far, about a quarter of those who voted in person in the last election say they plan to vote by mail this November. The same is true for those who have never voted before and will be casting their first ballots in this year’s election.
The numbers compiled by NPR are almost certainly an underestimate since not all states have made the information on rejected mail-in ballots available.
Even with limited data, the implications are considerable. NPR found that tens of thousands of ballots have been rejected in key battleground states, where the outcome in November — for the presidency, Congress and other elected positions — could be determined by a relatively small number of votes.
For example, President Trump won Wisconsin in 2016 by almost 23,000 votes. More than 23,000 absentee ballots were rejected in the state’s presidential primary in April. More than 37,000 primary ballots were also rejected in June in Pennsylvania, a state Trump won by just over 44,000 votes.
The numbers are also significant because of large partisan differences in how Americans plan to vote this fall. Democrats have expressed more interest than Republicans in voting by mail — 47% to 28% in the Democracy Fund/UCLA survey. Forty-eight percent of those who intend to vote for Joe Biden say they will use mail-in ballots, compared with 23% of Trump supporters.”
In the past, absentee ballots were overwhelmingly cast by Republicans, not Democrats, so Trump’s war on vote by mail is strange. Five states already do voting by mail, and no complaints of fraud. Trump said a few days ago that he was certain to win, and if he didn’t, it would be proof of a rigged election.
“Vote early and vote often”
Vote early, vote often
From womb and from coffin
In person, by mail
By car and by sail
From land and from sea
New York and DC
From Mars and from moon
Vote early, vote soon!
Thanks for the laugh, SDP! Sure need one.
& this short poem is very Dr. Seuss-ish.
I still think you should compile all your poems into a book: millions of people need a chuckle.
Trumps war on the post office has a motive I fear. I think the ability of precincts where he is supported will be tempted to throw the election to him by creating fraud. When this becomes known, it will give him a pretext for challenging the results, hoping to win in the Supreme Court. Failing that, he will rail on about being cheated, dividing the country even more. I try to interpret each trump move in terms of his goal of creating a disunity that is lasting.
Trump’s MO is to distract,divide, disrupt and sow chaos. We get exhausted.
I expect to vote in the same way I did last year, checking in with the human beings (masked) who have the registered voter list for my precinct and using a black pen (disinfected) to carefully fill in the box next to the name of my preferred candidate. I expect to see a dedicated worker prepared to wipe down each voting booth or table. I may have to wait in line because social distancing will be in place, but I will be indoors. If there are not enough poll workers for these arrangements, then I may be in trouble getting a mail-in ballot in time.
There can be no doubt that Trump and his supporters are using every means possible to cast doubt about the election outcome and if necessary to throw lawsuits into every state he did not win, especially those with a relatively small margin of loss. He also has in place an executive order that gives him a minimum of 90 days to investigate and receive a report if there are high-profile claims of foreign interference in our elections. These are among many reasons why a landslide is really needed, especially with an eye to states who are fiddling with Electoral College votes.
If you are interested in election security, look at Trump’s “Imposing Certain Sanctions in the Event of Foreign Interference in a United States Election” (EO 13848). The original draft included internet tampering, conveniently eliminated in the final.
See also https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2019/08/28/trumps-hostility-to-election-security-preparedness/.
I don’t trust US Mail and will instead deliver my ballot to an Early Voting Site. 😁
If the US Post Office can’t deliver baby chicks, baby crickets and meat, then I can’t trust them with my Biden vote. 🤔
I had 500 crickets delivered through the mail once (from Flukers cricket farm)
I did an experiment with them for my freshman biology class.
Crickets got loose and were all over the dorm. It sounded like woods at night.
Note: no crickets were harmed but a few were canibalized by their pals
Until Georgia, I never heard of a state secretary of state running an election. 😮🤔
Stacey Abrams was robbed of the Georgia Governorship. ☹️
Ahem–you mean ruINing an election!
&…yes, yes she was. Kemp is a criminal in more ways than one: he is responsible for the needless illness, deaths & suffering of Georgia’s citizens. How many people would still be alive & well if Abrams had been governor?
Me?
“Most Americans can vote by mail,” as some of the comments point out, is very misleading.
Here are two Wash Post articles:
This year’s primaries saw 500,000 ballots rejected: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/rejected-mail-ballots/2020/08/23/397fbe92-db3d-11ea-809e-b8be57ba616e_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-banner-main_electionballots-620pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans
And: in Florida: “I mailed my ballot on time; Florida tossed it”:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/florida-discard-mail-ballot/2020/08/21/bbedee18-e2ee-11ea-b69b-64f7b0477ed4_story.html
There simply has to be a massive get out the vote effort in support of the Democratic ticket, so that candidates from president to federal, state and local races win by huge majorities. Trump insiders and true believers will do everything possible to suppress votes as these two articles show.
Erich